Nelson Mandela Quotes

I just don't believe that when people are being unjustly oppressed that they should let someone else set rules for them by which they can come out from under that oppression.

Oppression costs the oppressor too much if the oppressed stand up and protest.

The oppressed have no alternative—for they have no power—but to fight.

I'll continue fighting as long as these social injustices exist.

You can Jail a Revolutionary but you can't jail the Revolution. You can run a freedom fighter around the country, but you can't run freedom fighting around the country. You can murder a liberator, but you can't murder liberation.

If you pinch the sea of its liberty, though it be walls of stone or brass, it will beat them down.

Despair and frustration will not shake our belief that the resistance is the only way of liberation.

Fight the power that be. Fight the power.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.

An oppressed people will always rise.

They think that, if we were just smart enough, we'd be able to understand their policies. And I so want to tell 'em, and I do tell 'em, Oh, we're plenty smart, oh yeah - we know what's goin' on. And we don't like what's goin' on. And we're not gonna let them tell us to sit down and shut up.

My fellow revolutionaries, liberation is a noble cause. We must fight to obtain it.

It is repression that creates the revolutionary spirit of freedom.

No dictator, no invader, can hold an imprisoned population by force of arms forever. There is no greater power in the universe than the need for freedom. Against that power, governments and tyrants and armies cannot stand…. Though it take a thousand years, we will be free.

If god is the root cause for our degradation destroy that god. If it is religion destroy it. If it is Manu Darma, Gita, or any other Mythology (Purana), burn them to ashes. If it is temple, tank, or festival, boycott them. Finally if it is our politics, come forward to declare it openly

If you are going to organize and ask for commitment, you cannot go to the most desperately poor. They are not likely to take action. If you stand on a man's head and push it into the dirt, he may not even see the heel of your boot. But if his whole face is already above ground, he can see your heel and he can see freedom ahead.

There are men put on this earth to make laws designed to break the spirits of men. There are those put here to have their spirits broken by those put here to break them. Then there are those who are here to break the laws that break the men who break the spirits of other men. I am one of those men. - Harry West

Write on my gravestone: 'Infidel, Traitor.', infidel to every church that compromises with wrong; traitor to every government that oppresses the people.

The revolution is ... the blow dealt ... agains the counter force of tyranny, which has never entirely recovered from the blow, but which from then till now has gone on remolding and regrappling the instruments of governmental power, that the Revolution sought to shape and hold as defenses of liberty.

To those who had ordered them to death, one of them said: “We die because the people are asleep and you will die because the people will awaken.”

They say that oppression engenders hate. They are heard on all sides crying hate hate.

I like to be able to raise people's consciousness, yes. And to remind that those of us involved in the receiving end of the oppression, we have a duty.

People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous.

When there is a huge force pressing down on freedoms, sub-cultures with more creativity and power are likely to form.

Revolution is the festival of the oppressed.